The Orioles rank 11th in draft bonus pool allotment for 2012

Under Major League Baseball’s new collective bargaining agreement all teams will be allotted a certain amount by MLB in a bonus pool to sign its top 10 round picks, starting with the 2012 First-Year Player Draft.

The amount of the pool total depends both on how high the team picks in the first round of the draft and how many selections a club has in the top 10 rounds. Baseball America released a list today of the bonus pool money allotted each club.

The Orioles have the fourth pick in round one next June but their total pool allotment ranks 11th most overall at $6,826,900 as reported by BA’s Jim Callis.

I asked Callis how the Orioles could have the fourth highest pick in round one, yet rank only 11th in their total bonus pool allotment?

“It is pretty simple. The supplemental first round this year is really a round to itself with 29 picks. It’s like a whole extra round and the Orioles don’t have one of those picks. That is why even though they have the number four pick, every team ahead of them has at least one additional draft pick and most teams ahead of them have two, three or four more draft picks.

“Only two of the 10 teams ahead of them have 11 picks, everyone else has 12, 13 or 14. The four teams right behind the Orioles have two or three extra picks. The Orioles are the only team in the top 16 pool totals that have only the standard 10 picks,” Callis said.

“The sandwich picks range from $1.55 million for the Twins picking at 32, down to $857,200 for the Blue Jays at pick 60. If they had a pick, even in the midpoint of that, it would rate about $1.2 million and the Orioles would rank closer to the top. They don’t have extra picks and that is where some teams leapfrogged them.”.

Here are the Orioles amounts allotted to sign their first three round picks, according to Callis, for the 2012 draft:

According to the new CBA rules for the draft, any club not signing one of its top 10 round picks will lose the bonus money allotted for that specific pick. But any club that signs a top 10 round pick for a savings can use the savings amount on other selections.

“If the Orioles didn’t sign the number four pick, they can’t take his allotted $4.2 million and distribute it in the rest of the draft, it just goes away. But let’s say they spent $3.2 on that pick. That gives them a million to play with and go over the limits for another pick or picks, even one after the tenth round,” Callis said.

Two American League East teams will have much less money to spend on the top 10 rounds this year than the amount they spent on the top 10 in 2011. Boston, after spending about $10 million last year, will be allotted around $6.9 million.

Tampa Bay, which had 12 of the first 89 picks last June and spent $11.3 million on the top 10 rounds then, will be allotted just $3.9 million for its 10 picks in the top 10 rounds this year.

Here is another story from Callis detailing some of the draft changes for 2012.

Coming tomorrow: Baseball America will release its list of baseball’s top 100 prospects and I will check in with Callis after its release to get his take on the Orioles on the list. Last year, in the preseason top 100 for 2011, BA rated Manny Machado 14th and Zach Britton 28th on the list.

Earlier MLB.com released its top 100, ranking Machado sixth and Dylan Bundy 10th.